


Seeing Red

by GloryBox



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Citadel fight club, Gen, but not really, except with ferals, more like Citadel dog fighting, very violent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-04 23:58:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5353181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloryBox/pseuds/GloryBox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max's reputation as a "raging feral" lands him in the middle of a fighting pit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing Red

**Author's Note:**

> So I saw an AU on tumblr were Max doesn't escape and instead gets used as a feral fighter in the Citadel. I don't know the deal with using AU's from tumblr so this isn't quite that, but was definitely inspired by that post. And I also just watched Warrior the other night so either way something like this was gonna happen.

 

“Sometimes it feels good to fuck with something. Instead of always being fucked with.”  
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places 

 

 

“No!”  The Organic snapped.   Max’s eyes cracked open.  He was dizzy, his blood pounding in his ears.  His vision was dark, but he knew he was upside down and looking at the ever familiar wall of the Blood Shed, the heavy muzzle intruding in his vision.  He was familiar enough with the routine to know that they wouldn’t bleed him much longer, that his time was just about up before they crammed him back into that cage.

“C’mon!  He’d be perfect!”

“He’s a universal donor.  Not gonna let em' get beaten to death in a fucking fightin pit.” 

“ _He_ wouldn’t get beaten to death, he’d beat the other feral’s.  That’s why we want him so bad!"

“No!  Now fuck off, both of you.  If I catch you around here again for something other than a transfusion I’ll skin you both.”  The Organic snapped.  Max heard the disgruntled mumbling of at least two war boys move behind him, the one below him perking up, feeling better now that he had a couple pints of Max’s ‘high octane crazy blood’ in him.           

 

The act of being a blood bag was in itself, a form of death.  It was a small death each time they bled him, draining him of blood day in and day out, leaving him dizzy and weak. Then a slower, more insidious death crept in as they killed his mind.  The dull routine, drop, bleed, cage, drop, bleed, cage, it made his ghosts scream.  They were angry and bored too, sick of being stuck in the Blood Shed with him.  Glory alternated between wailing and singing nursery rhymes, always skittering in the corner of his vision.  Other dead faces would occasionally visit him, accusing and angry, making him flinch and twitch.  

Even dizzy with blood loss he doesn't find sleep easy when they finally cram him back in his cage.  His arms are still bound behind him, but the muzzle is off at least.  Glory whispers to herself below him and he hears a few other ghosts worming their way into his brain and he almost groans.  He just wanted a few minutes of quiet, just a few minutes of absolute silence in his head, no ghosts or whispers.  

He tries to doze off for an unknown amount of time, in and out of a light, restless sleep for a few hours perhaps, when he hears some war boys whispering beneath his cage. 

“Now is _not_ the time for the cattle prod.  We don’t want him slowed down in the fight.” 

“Then how do we keep him from attacking _us_?”

“With this.”  Max hears something that sounds awfully like the click of a magazine locking into place.  Max looks down, highly concerned and tenses up.  Two war boys stood beneath his cage, one with a 9 mm, looking up with dopey smiles on their faces. 

“Ready Threx?”  The one with the gun asked, a little breathless.  Threx nodded, and the one with the gun let out the bottom of Max’s cage.  Max braced his legs so he wouldn’t fall out but Threx knew he was going to do just that and jumped up, grabbing Max by the waistband of his pants and Max was yanked down as gravity claimed the war boy.  

He was flipped upside down, suspended from the cage and the last thing he sees is the butt of the gun then everything’s black. 

 

It is loud.  Max can’t see worth a shit, there’s something over his head, but he can certainly hear the deafening whooping of a very large, boisterous crowd of war boys, drowning out all other sound.  His head hurts, but not bad, he’s not concussed.  His heart is beginning to pound, his breathing quickening.  What the fuck was happening?  Whatever it could be, it could only be bad. 

Suddenly he’s yanked up by his arms, still bound behind his back.  He snarls and jerks and the sack is ripped off his head and Max is temporarily blinded, squinting at the warm light.  Once his eyes adjust he sees he is standing on the edge of a large pit, the walls about eight feet high and completely vertical and smooth stone, the bottom made of sand.  War boys surrounded the pit, most of them were looking at Max when the one behind him severed the bindings to his wrists and before Max could react, shoved him forward. 

Even if Max had been ready for it, it would not have been a graceful fall.  He lands on his stomach, dust shooting up in a line in front of his nose and mouth as the wind is knocked out of him, a sandy haze puffing up around him.  Max quickly pushes himself up, coughing, eyes bloodshot from the sand, just in time to see another man drop in across from him in a similar manner. 

Something hits him in the head and he looks up to see war pups and war boys throwing stones at him, delighted smiles on their faces as he flinches away from the pebbles.  His heart is pounding in his chest and every molecule feels frayed.  This is bad.  Whatever this is, it is very bad.  Suddenly things quieted, and an ancient looking war boy (more like a war man) stepped forward.  He had a permanent sneer, one corner of his mouth crooked and droopy.  He points to Max. 

“Alright!  We have the feral blood bag, who nearly escaped by jumping off a cliff and fought a dozen war boys to get there.”  He shouted in a halting, military like fashion, like what he said was a chant.  Then the old war boy pointed to the other man. 

“Then we have the feral we pulled out of the Bad Lands just yesterday, who bit off a war boys ear trying to escape.  Pick your feral and lets do war!” 

The yelling of the war boys resumed and seemed to reach a new deafening height and a sudden increase of pebbles was thrown at Max and the other man.  Once Max stepped forward, away from the wall, arms up trying to shield himself, he realized what they were doing. 

They were pushing him and the other feral in the middle of the pit.  They were going to make them fight, like a couple of animals.  The other feral seemed to be coming to the same conclusion, their eyes meeting as the men begrudgingly shuffled closer to the middle of the pit.  Max didn't want to fight, especially not this guy.  He'd fight a war boy, those white painted, blood thieves all deserved a good fist to the face, but not this guy, who probably wanted to be here just as much as Max did.  

The pebbles lessened the closer to the middle the men got and soon they were only a few yards apart, watching each other warily, both panicked and feral.   It was so _loud_ , he couldn’t even hear his ghosts but they flickered at the edges of his vision.  Glory giggled, her fleeting shadow distracts him, visibly apparently, because the other feral takes advantage and lunges.  

The Other feral jumps at him, snarling and animal while Max stumbles backwards, eyes wide in surprise.  The other feral tries to grab his ears and Max swats his hands away but then the Other feral clocks him, snapping his head to the side.  Max doesn't have any time to recover before the Other feral grabs the back of his head and slams it down to an unforgiving knee cap.  Max feels his nose crunch and tastes blood then is thrown down on the ground.   

A boot connects with his ribs and Max cries out, then the Other feral kicks him, again and again and again.  Finally, through the haze of agony, Max manages to catch the dirty boot mid kick and yanks so the Other feral loses balance.  The Other feral crashes down nearly perpendicular to Max and Max tries to leap on top of him, blood dripping from his nose, mouth and chin, bloody teeth bared.  They roll, Max tries to subdue the Other feral by pining his arm behind his back but with some kind of adrenaline induced brute force, the Other feral manages to wrench his arm free and flip them.  Max is suddenly beneath this stinky, heavy, feral man with his hands wrapped around his throat.  

Max gags, his eyes bugging out as he tries to grab the Other feral's face but his efforts prove useless.  The whooping of the war boys syncs up with the sound of his heart beat, pounding in his ears as the life is slowly choked from him.  His vision is darkening and the Other feral lifts his head by the throat then slams it back on the ground, trying to speed up the process.   _He's going to kill you Max_ Glory hisses in his ear. _What do you think you're gonna do when you can't hide with the living anymore?_     _You'll just have to stay right with **us**_  

Something mean surges through Max like adrenaline, his vision turns red and he jolts _._ Max grabs a fistful of sand and throws it in the Other feral’s eyes.  The Other feral jerks back, yelling, and Max sucks in air then shoots up and tries to take a disoriented swing at him.  The Other feral manages to dodge the punch by throwing himself back and then manages to get to his feet in record speed.  Max is quicker though and is on him before he's fully standing, landing a hard punch to his cheek, snapping his head to the side and sending him staggering back even further.  

Max pursues him, grabs his head and starts a pitiless onslaught kneeing the Other feral in the face all the way across the pit, towards the wall that Max then flings him into with enough force to shake the sand from above, the war boys howling in excitement.  A look of pure fear crosses the Other feral’s face just before Max brutally punches him in the gut, doubling him over, then Max grabs the Other feral by the shirt and throws him on the ground, the Other feral landing on his belly with an _oof_.  Max immediately stomps on the Other feral’s spine, kicks his head, then in a fit of rage, flips the dazed feral over and stomps on his gut, making him howl.  Then Max steps over the Other Feral and leans down to savagely punch him in the head, knocking his head side to side and then drops down and sits on his chest and starts beating him with brutal punches to his face. 

The first one breaks his nose, the second one jams it back into his brain.  Then things start to fade out after that.  It becomes blissfully quiet.  No ghosts, no thoughts, no war boys yelling.  It is finally quiet, the violence isn’t in his head anymore.  It’s real and it’s out.  It’s the blood and adrenaline pumping through his veins, it’s his gory fists every time they come in contact with the Other feral’s face, again, again, again, again, again.  He isn’t counting, he isn’t thinking, he knows nothing, just that it is finally quiet, and for the first time in a long, long time, he is in control. 

He eventually comes back, the red haze fading, the sound that had muted in the background suddenly roaring in his ears.  The war boys were yelling, whooping repeatedly and he was sitting on the chest of a man who’s face he had just beaten in, Max’s own shaking, bloody hands still curled into fists. 

Max had seen a lot of dead things in his life, and this other feral was one of them.   _Fuck_ , he thought.  _I shouldn't have done that.  I shouldn’t have killed him_.  He could tell himself he had done the Other feral favor, giving the gift of death in this horrid place, but like the Organic Mechanic giving blood to his war boys, it wasn’t his to give.  Not his right.   _I shouldn’t have done that…_

Max staggered up, unable to stop looking at the gory mess that was left of the other feral’s face, was so focused he didn’t see two war boys drop into the pit behind him, too lost to hear the war boy who had the gun say, “ _This_ is when you use the cattle prod,” and shocked Max until things went black. 

 

 

 

Blood dripped from Max's nose and mouth, his head lolling as they dragged his limp form through the tunnels.  

"He's gonna fucking kill us!"  Threx said, shifting his hand on Max's bicept for a better grip.   _This blood bag is fucking heavy_ he thought.      

"No he's not."  

"Look at his face Crank!  Or his hands!  The Organic's gonna skin us alive for fucking up his favorite blood bag!"  Threx exclaimed, his voice cracking a little bit on _Crank_.  

"First of all, this is _not_ the Organic's favorite blood bag, I don't even think he has those.  This is the Organic's most _useful_ blood bag.  And second of all, he's not gonna skin us." Crank informed him, unnervingly calm.  

"How do you know?"  

"Because our feral won us _this_ ,"  Crank said, using his free hand to grab the messenger bag on his shoulder.  

"What is it?"  

"All sorts of shine Organic mechanical stuff from the Bullet Farm."  

"You think that's gonna save us?"  Threx asked, skeptical.  Crank snickered.  

"Course it is.  Organic loves this kind of stuff.  And it's just a blood bag, after all."  

They finish the walk in silence, the blood bag beginning to stir once they near the Blood Shed.  Just before they entered, Threx nervously watching the blood bag start to move his head, his burly shoulder flexing against his hold, Crank suddenly stopped.  He precariously shifted the blood bags arm while trying to balance the bag on his thigh, plucking out random instruments. 

"What are you doing?"  Threx asked anxiously, eyes darting back to the blood bag who seemed to be getting more alert by the second.  Crank was rolling some of the instruments in a rag he had sticking out of his pants and hiding it behind an alcove.  

"Only giving the Organic half, that way he'll let us fight the feral again."  He said, getting a good handle on the blood bag just as the feral jerked, trying to wrench his way out their grips.  

"You're _blackmailing_ the Organic Mechanic?" Threx snapped as they wrangled with the blood bag.

"Course not.  Just making him think that the only way he's gonna get the other half is by letting the feral fight again so he can win it."  Crank explained as they dragged the thrashing feral into the blood shed.  

They made it back to his cage to find the Organic sitting under it, arms crossed, shoulders hunched, a long line of drool going from the side of his mouth down to his crossed forearm, and he looked _furious_.  

The Organic's eyes darted between Threx and Crank, then on the feral, who was eyeing the cage with a look as if it was the sum of all horrors.  "Never heard of thieves returning stolen property."  The Organic started menacingly.    

"Didn't steal, just borrowed."  Crank said.  The feral was still trying to break away, but he was exhausted and hurting from the fight, his thrashing already dying down.  "And we made it worth your while."  He said, smiling.  The Organic looked genuinely surprised, eyebrows furrowing and cocked his head.  

"Yea?  And hows that?"  

Crank shouldered the messenger bag and the Organic took it and inspected the contents.  A smile creeped across his face.  

"Where did you get this?"  

"Imperator from the Bullet Farm bet it.  He lost on our feral."  

"Bullet Farm?  Knew that they had some good stuff over at Gas Town, wouldn't expect it from there..."  The Organic mumbled but seemed pleased.  

"And there's more."  Crank said added evenly.  The Organic looked at him, eyebrows raised.  "There's more of that stuff.  The Imperator said that he'd be betting on the next Pit fight."  

The Organic looked back in the bag then at the feral, who seemed to have exhausted himself and looked out with his usual baleful expression.   He sighed.  

"Fine.  You can fight my universal donor."  The Organic took a step forward to inspect the feral.  "Gotta get him cleaned up though,"  The Organic mumbled, reaching up to gently inspect the feral's gory knuckles.  The blood bag flinched violently but the Organic was unfazed, used to the feral's flinches and jerks.  "What'd he do?  Punch a wall for an hour?"  

"Beat the other feral's face in.  Just wailed on him for forever."  Threx said, smiling.  The Organic snorted and called in a few other war boys, the blood bag watching everything in that nervous, flighty way feral's had.  "Told you he'd be the one beating the other feral's to death."  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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